Maybe the best thing to do for someone who has had PTSD is to give them the treatment they need, a warm handshake and then let them get on with their lives? I am not a mental health professional, but I would think that the best treatment would be to get them on their feet and moving in the right direction and let them do the healing. I don't think a medal would help towards that end.
> Maybe the best thing to do for someone who has had PTSD is to give them the treatment they need, a warm handshake and then let them get on with their lives?
Why should that same thing not be done with physical injuries? Why should they warrant a medal, and not someone with mental injuries?
> I am not a mental health professional, but I would think that the best treatment would be to get them on their feet and moving in the right direction and let them do the healing.
I’m not a mental health professional either, but I do sit as a Trustee on a board of an organization that looks after the mentally ill. People who use our services struggle with a number of things right outside their mental illness: first is the stigma that always comes along with having a mental illness.
This stigma does not come along with any other illness or physical injury: only the mentally ill get stigmatized for being ill. And they struggle with having their illness being recognized as something that cannot be fixed by “simply snapping out of it”. Seems like everyone is an expert on fixing mental illnesses, from Tony Robbins to Deepak Chopra to Joe Bloggs at the water cooler. Yet physical illnesses and injuries are usually left to the “professionals”. So, usually, mental illness is not taken as seriously as it should be.
> I don’t think a medal would help towards that end.
Again, turning the question around, why would a medal help toward helping a soldier who had been physically injured to heal? Why is his physical injury more “serious” and “praiseworthy” than another soldier’s mental injury? Why is the physical injury more deserving of a medal?
I am unconvinced by this: I think the Pentagon is making a mistake.